The creed divides humanity into two conditions, the living and the dead. The tendency nowadays is treat the second group rather dismissively. The dead have “passed away” and we the living have the stage entirely to ourselves. This is a very narrow view of our humanity leaving us in something of an impoverished ghetto of the living. The Christian understanding broadens our view. The Church, the Body of Christ, is composed simultaneously and in equal rank of the living and the dead. We continue to be united in the one Body to those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. This is called the “communion of saints,” a spiritual union that is expressed through the sacraments and in mutual prayer.

When we are born the only people we know are those who are alive. As we grow older we become aware of the temporal limits of life, and the other side of the Jordan becomes more and more populated with loved ones and acquaintances whom we have known in this life. This awareness helps us to mature and to use the light of each day more wisely. We come to appreciate more deeply our human relationships in this life and the love that is able to go beyond even what seems the most final of all separations.

In our Christian education we learn of the great saints of the Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the apostles and martyrs, and the countless other saints through the ages, some of whose lives may have a special attraction to us. We do not think of them as dead people at all. They have not “passed away” but are near to us in Christ. We have known them only in God and from the perspective of faith, and we can remember them and celebrate their lives in the Church’s calendar without any twinge of grief or recollection of separation.

However when death overtakes our loved ones in this life the situation is much different. We have known them as our companions among the living. Death interrupts this relationship, and so a sense of separation and the pain of personal loss come to the fore. Only slowly can we discover that here too a relationship can go on. A change has occurred but this change is not the end. Love does not surrender at the grave, and this is true on both sides. In the Lord our love still reaches them and their love still touches us. When someone close to us dies we desire above all to cling to our memory of him or her. We wish to hold on even to the grief we feel lest anything be lost to forgetfulness. But this is not enough. Like two people separated in a flood the stream of life and events seems to carry us further and further apart. The memories we have of our loved ones are precious, but we must not become frantic if they seem to fade. Memories are not the only or even the most important part of our relationship to the departed. Our loved ones do not live in our memory, rather they live in the Lord.

When the Sadducees asked our Lord a trick question about belief in the resurrection He went out of his way to affirm the life to come: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob “is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him.” God retains his covenantal relationship with his people even beyond death; therefore they must live in and for the sake of this relationship. If to God our loved ones are alive, they must be alive to us as well.

There is also a basis for this relationship in the deepest realities we shared together in this life. With us the faithful departed share the life that is in and from God. This is our real life, and we no less then they depend upon it. Together we have been reborn in Baptism to a new life through the death and resurrection of Christ. Together we live by the faith, hope, and love that do not pass away but abide. Together we are members of the one and same Church, the Body of Christ that embraces both the living and the dead. Sharing the one life of Christ we still pray with and for one another. Together we await “our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” who will come again precisely “to judge the living and the dead.”

Seen in this way we can understand that our relationship to departed loved ones is as much a matter of the future as of the past. This knowledge allows us to grow past the pain of our personal loss and grief. We can accept a new future for ourselves because we realize that our loves ones too in their life in God are oriented to the future. We do not leave them behind in the past, but in God they accompany us, they are a source of strength and encouragement, and one day our paths will converge in “the life of the world to come. “

The first article of the creed states, “I believe in God.” Then it carries us through the other articles to the final phrase, “life everlasting.” These two declarations and what is between them are all related. We cannot stop half way through the creed. The beginning already implies the ending. And the ending always points us back to the beginning, to God the Father, who through His Son and in His Spirit is the source and goal of our life and of those gone before us.

We are thankful to Boy Scout Gerald Chizmadia and his co-workers for a number of improvements in the cemetery this summer. Brush and low hanging tree branches were removed and the numbered metal markers indicating the graves were seated in concrete to keep them from sinking below the grass line.

The cemetery was also enhanced with the services of a profession nursery in July. Four shade trees and three ornamental trees were planted to make the empty space more inviting. At the front, large stones have been placed and between them there is a hedge of Boxwood shrubs. Through the hedge a pathway of tiles has been laid. The entrance is marked by an arbor which will be covered eventually by blooming honey suckle vines. At the end of the pathway there is a small plaza with benches on which to sit . The crucifix that was above the door of the old chapel will find a new home near this area.

The interior of the Church has “new” pews to replace the metal folding chairs along the north and south walls. We are thankful to Pastor David Abrahamson and the people of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Chicago for the generous donation of these pews which were unused after a renovation of their choir balcony.

In the afternoon of the third Sunday in August a Bach Music Festival was held in the chapel. We are thankful to Gwen Toney for once again coordinating this program and to all the musicians who contributed to it. Following the concert a reception was held outdoors around the Gazebo.

We have had a small parking area near the handicap entrance of the church paved with asphalt as well as the whole length of the east lane to Drahner Road. This will greatly facilitate the removal of snow in the winter and also avoid the frequent problems with mud in the spring.

• SEPTEMBER by George Heldt in memory of his parents Arnold and Marie Heldt.
• OCTOBER by Donald R. Fritz in honor of Ken Buehler.

It is inevitable that we should be sad when those we love depart from us by dying. Although we know they are not leaving us for ever, that they have but gone a little ahead of us, that we who remain will follow them, nevertheless our nature shrinks from death, and when it takes a loved one we are filled with sorrow simply because of our love for that person. That is why the Apostle did not tell us that we should not be saddened, but that we should not be saddened in the same way as those who have no hope. In the death of those who are close to us we experience both sadness at the necessity of losing them, and hope of getting them back. By the former we are distressed by the latter consoled; in the one our weakness touches us, in the other faith restores us. In our loss the human condition mourns, but through hope the divine promise heals….

Faithful hearts should be allowed, then, to mourn for their loved ones, but with a grief that can be healed; let them shed over our mortal condition tears that can be wiped away, tears that can be quickly checked by the joy of that faith which assures us that when believers die they go but a little distance from us that they may pass to a better state. ~ St. Augustine

Photos coming soon..., or click on the pdf version: Fall 2005 Newsletter